Thomas Browne

“ Let me speak in terms of sport: our life is a race to which we are summoned by lot from fate’s stable, set high or low in the car, and we drive our trace-horses badly. Often we crash before reaching the dolphins, we seldom pass the turning point, we mostly stop before the circuit-marks are finished, the course is hardly ever completed. ”

“ From the ceiling to the floor everyone watched comic and savage acts with the same expression, few protest, more applaud. We ourselves in the end on the field of death repay in all seriousness the price of folly, mangled by disease, wounded in many darts, without the hope of release, we are dragged into the pit of hell. ”

“ Who that reads the Parodist of Matro does not blame time for being no respecter of persons? Who will not desire a milder wearing away of time in the lost books of Antiphanes, Antigonus, Alexis and the others? so that sometimes we might reach the sharp wit of the Greeks, sometimes might see the bare Latin horn, now covered with Greek patches, which time will never lay bare. ”

“ We pour into the theatre of life in a great rabble, there are not enough entrances, gangways, rows or sections for this silly show. From top to bottom of the theatre few are satisfied with their seats. ”

“ Pleasant is that custom of entertainment of Charmus of Syracuse, to attach amusingly suitable rhymes and mottoes to each dish at feasts. I am sure more amusing ones could have been attached than those which Athenaeus records. Mimes, fools, parasites, lute-girls are bearable and not inappropriate amusement for a drinking party. But that kind of mock murder, ‘the hanging game’, in which a horrible kind of malignant pleasure the ancients watched from the table with laughter and mockery while men were absurdly trussed up, is the summit of monstrous feasts. ”

“ The early writer Chaerilus so paraphrases Hebrew that he leaves it in doubt whether he thought it Syriac or Arabic, Hellanicus and the earlier Greeks who from reading or translation had some knowledge of Hebrew matters before the Ptolemaic period, changed so many words and sounds that they need inebriated deciphering, as it is no wonder they could be deceived as to the Spartans drawing their origin from Abraham, in the letter of Maccabaeus to the Jews. Linguistic ability is worthy of honour; but the man who thoroughly knows Greek alone is equal to the man of many tongues. ”

“ Many words occur in authors outside the classic period which satisfy eager discernment and fill the corners of the mind. I seize on some in Sidonius, Apuleius etc. which I miss in the greatest of orators.
Athanaeus called Laurentius ‘lightning wielder’ or ambidextrous since he was skilled in Latin and Greek. A two-tongued man was a wonder to Galen, indeed a man skilful in two languages was a marvel. Yet many barbarians were linguists. How many languages had the King of Pontus who employed a man that spoke twenty? ”

“ The impudent wantonness of the ancients placed sponges in the natural parts of women that by expanding they might produce a lewd and as it were haunching movement in the female, whence a keener lust is provoked in the male. ”